evan lieberman

Research on ethnic-based preferences in Africa

Evan Lieberman — Thu, 02 May 2013 19:15:11 +0000

I’m happy to report that this article, co-authored with Gwyneth McClendon, was recently published in Comparative Political Studies and is now available for your reading pleasure. I paste the abstract below, but the punchline is that even when we control for all sorts of individual-level and contextual factors, African citizen policy preferences vary quite systematically along ethnic lines. We think this has important implications for how we understand the working of ethnic politics, and the challenges of governance under certain types of ethnic diversity.

Of related interest, a few articles on ethnic categorization and violence, co-authored with Prerna Singh, can be found at our project website.

The Ethnicity–Policy Preference Link in Sub-Saharan Africa

Evan S. Lieberman

Gwyneth H. McClendon

Abstract

Scholars have begun to investigate the mechanisms that link ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision but have paid only minimal attention to the role of preferences for public policies. Some argue that ethnic groups hold culturally distinctive preferences for goods and policies, and that such differences impede effective policy making, but these studies provide little evidence to support this claim. Others argue that preferences do not vary systematically across ethnic groups, but again the evidence is limited. In this article, we engage in a systematic exploration of the link between ethnic identity and preferences for public policies through a series of individual and aggregated analyses of Afrobarometer survey data from 18 sub-Saharan African countries. We find that in most countries, preferences do vary based on ethnic group membership. This variation is not merely an expression of individual-level socioeconomic differences or of group-level cultural differences. Instead, we suggest that citizens use ethnicity as a group heuristic for evaluating public policies in a few predictable ways: We find more persistent disagreement about public policies between politically relevant ethnic groups and where group disparities in wealth are high.

A bittersweet farewell to the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa)

Evan Lieberman — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:44:38 +0000

The Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa played a pivotal role in that country’s transition away from apartheid rule. Two “white liberals” – Alex Borraine and the late Frederick van Zyl Slabbert – left their jobs as members of parliament in order to meet with exiled members of the African National Congress in various remote locations. Out of the spotlight of the media and everyday politics, they helped negotiate a series of ice-breakers between the white and black elites, initiating a set of discussions that would pave the way for Mandela’s release and the writing of a new constitution. Of course, many factors made such meetings possible, including the challenges and protests of so many ordinary citizens in South Africa and abroad, but few serious observers of that country’s history would discount the importance of these early, secretive, get-to-know-you retreats.

Following Mandela’s release, the unbanning of the ANC, and the first multi-racial elections, it was not exactly clear what role various anti-apartheid organizations might play given that their core mandates no longer seemed relevant. In the case of Idasa, it transformed itself in name (but not acronym) to be an organization that would help South African citizens build this new democracy with various information, awareness and monitoring functions. (Steven Friedman correctly highlights that the simple bridge-building work of the original Idasa is still needed today.)

Back in the early 1990s, I was lucky to meet a few of Idasa’s key program managers, including Robert Mattes, who would run the Public Opinion Service; and Warren Krafchik, who directed the Budget Information Service. These projects conducted pioneering research on citizen attitudes and the emerging budget process, and they communicated their findings to scholars, policy-makers, and ordinary citizens. A few years later, while I was a doctoral student at UC Berkeley, these folks kindly allowed me to serve as an intern in their units, provided me a desk and an internet connection, and most importantly, allowed me to be a part of the organization.

My year was personally and professionally inspiring. The period 1997-8 was surely the height of the post-apartheid “honeymoon,” the year following the Springbok win of the Rugby World Cup (now of Invictus fame). Idasa had purchased a marvelous old building at 6 Spin Street, right around the corner from the nation’s parliament, the national library, and several key offices of the bureaucracy, including the South African Revenue Service. Each day the building’s corridors came alive with art and performances, as leading politicians and scholars from around the country and around the world stopped in for visits. At morning tea time, as I developed a taste for Rooibos tea many years before it would become an American rage, I learned so much from my colleagues about their respective cultures, and from their work in trying to consolidate democratic practice in this divided society.

In the years to follow, Idasa continued to generate a great deal of research, including in the area I began to study – HIV/AIDS policy – and the organization would extend the scope of its activities to the entire Southern African region. More recently, I discovered that the Cape Town office closed, and all of the operations were consolidated in the Pretoria office. The organization’s stature was clearly in decline. It was certainly not an activist organization, barely a monitoring organization, perhaps a research outfit, but not quite a think-tank. If donor support fell away, perhaps it was because the organization’s mission had simply become too ambiguous. In late March, the director announced that Idasa would close due to lack of financial support.

On the one hand, I am so sad to hear of this great institution’s fall. I retain just a speck of hope that some angel donor will come in to resuscitate this once giant. On the other hand, perhaps I should just pay tribute to its incredibly important legacy, which gave hope to the most brilliant political story that I’ve observed in my lifetime – one which continues to animate my own life and career to this day. In just a few weeks, one of my old Idasa friends, Albert Van Zyl, who now works for our old boss, Warren Krafchik, will present the work of the International Budget Project to my class of Princeton undergraduates learning about the Politics of Development.

I am very proud to have been associated with this distinguished organization. Despite its current lack of a Wikipedia entry(!), I hope its role in contemporary South African history will be sufficiently recognized.

The LRC challenges the shame of South Africa’s schools

Evan Lieberman — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:05:51 +0000

There is much to admire about South Africa’s relative progress and stability in the almost nineteen years since its first multiracial election, but its school system is truly an embarrassment. Despite the country’s upper-middle-income classification, many areas that were formerly designated as so-called “homelands” (i.e., the Transkei and Ciskei), resemble the poorest areas of many of Africa’s poorest countries.

I paste below a link to a wonderful but depressing story about the dismal state of Eastern Cape schools — sometimes referred to as the “mud schools” because several are made of mud. It highlights how the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) has been working to protect children’s rights to education, suing the government to provide appropriate resources. It should not be necessary to litigate for decent schools for the poorest kids, but at least that avenue is available and seems to have had some impact.

http://mg.co.za/multimedia/2013-03-07-the-forgotten-schools-of-the-eastern-cape

How Mozambique is anticipating the resource curse

Evan Lieberman — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 22:08:48 +0000

Interesting article on how Mozambique and several other countries are trying to avoid the fate of the “resource curse” following discoveries of coal and gas within their territories. Will be very interesting to see if such self-conscious awareness of the potential for conflict can be addressed through early institutional planning. If so, will really give me faith in the enlightenment ideal that social analysis and self-conscious reflection can improve the human condition! That said, not yet clear what they will do, except that many will insist on greater government transparency in handling contracts.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Resource curse casts a shadow on Mozambique’s door (Business Day)

by Jinty Jackson, March 13 2013, 07:46

Mozambican first lady Graça Machel. Picture: SUNDAY TIMES

AS INVESTORS flock to Mozambique because of vast coal and gas discoveries, the impoverished country is poised to begin a journey many other resource-rich emerging nations have already taken: trying to harness its resource wealth for the benefit of future generations.

Many have failed trying. Mozambique is now the latest country facing the difficult question: how to avoid the “resource curse”, whereby economies in resource-rich countries grow more slowly than others, as unwanted side-effects of this wealth, such as corruption, take hold.

Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Angola, Sao Tome and Norway are among the countries that have come forward recently to advise Mozambique on how it might avoid some of the most obvious pitfalls when it comes to managing its hydrocarbon bonanza.

NEWS ANALYSIS: Resource curse casts a shadow on Mozambique’s door | Africa | BDlive.

Guest Post: Kenyan votes roll in

Jessica Grody — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:13:50 +0000

Another guest post from Jessica Grody in Nairobi

Vote tallying continues more than 24 hours after the Kenyan polls closed. Although results are expected within 48 hours, the IEBC, Kenya’s independent election commission, has up to seven days to release the official results.

One of the most shocking figures of the vote tally is the percentage of rejected votes. Currently, over 5% of the total votes cast have been labeled invalid. Votes are rejected if the ballot papers were filled out incorrectly or placed in the wrong boxes. Voters were given six colored pieces of paper as ballots, one for each position available, and were instructed to place ballots in the matching boxes. Many complained that colors were very similar to begin with – the pale green looked like the pale blue which looked like the pale purple. Voters might have had challenges differentiating between the colors in the best of circumstances, a prospect that was made even more difficult for citizens who cast their votes in the many polling stations that lacked electricity or where voting continued long past sundown.

There is some discussion over how the rejected ballots will effect the final tally. The Kenyan Constitution states that the president must receive more than half of the votes cast, and some legal scholars are claiming that the rejected votes should count in the tally of votes cast. This could be enough to put Uhuru Kenyatta, who is currently leading with 53% of the tallied votes, below the 50% threshold.

http://elections.nation.co.ke/news/Rejected-votes-worrying-says-IEBC-chairperson/-/1631868/1712046/-/ju23imz/-/index.html

Certainly the technological failures of this election will be greatly scrutinized in the coming weeks. The government spent a great deal of time and money purchasing biometric voter registration kits, which recorded voters’ fingerprints during registration and were intended to greatly reduce voter fraud. However, many polling stations did not use the electronic registry on election day because the equipment had inadequate battery life or failed to recognize fingerprints, and because many election officials could not remember how to access or use the system. They resorted to the manual voter registration book, which is much slower and more susceptible to tampering.

http://elections.nation.co.ke/news/IEBC-at-pains-to-explain-system-failure/-/1631868/1711412/-/840wg/-/index.html

http://elections.nation.co.ke/news/Poll-kit-hitches-delay-voting-for-hours/-/1631868/1711468/-/15kbwglz/-/index.html

The IEBC is also taking heat for major delays in vote transmission when the servers crashed. Improving the transparency in vote counting was a priority in this election, since alleged improprieties in that stage of the 2007 election contributed to the disputed results and ensuing violence.

http://elections.nation.co.ke/news/IEBC-owns-up-to-hitch-in-results-transmission/-/1631868/1711796/-/sta61v/-/index.html

While the atmosphere in Kenya is still calm, everyone remains glued to their television and radio sets waiting for the rest of the results to be tallied.